A cashel is a type of ringfort defined by its stone construction rather than earthen banks and ditches, and examples are found across Ireland, particularly in areas where surface stone was abundant and easy to work. They tend to date from the early medieval period, roughly the sixth to twelfth centuries, and would have served as enclosed farmsteads for a single family and their livestock, the enclosing wall offering protection from raiders and wolves alike.

Beyond its classification and location, the documentary record for this particular cashel in Drummeer is presently thin. What can be said is that its very existence in this part of Clare places it within a wider pattern of early medieval settlement that was dense across the province of Munster, where stone enclosures were the preferred form of defended homestead for farming families of middling status. The cashel form, with its drystone or mortared circular wall, sometimes accompanied by an internal souterrain, a narrow underground passage used for storage or refuge, represents one of the most enduring building traditions in early Irish rural life. Thousands survive across the country in varying states of preservation, many still visible as low circular walls or spreads of collapsed masonry in fields that have been farmed continuously since.